Developed in parallel with the game's console versions, the PC version of Max Payne 3 supports a number of advanced graphics options, scalable high-resolution textures and character models, DirectX11 features, multi-monitor support and 3D.

Featuring cutting edge shooting mechanics for precision gunplay, advanced new Bullet Time® and Shootdodge™ effects, full integration of Natural Motion's Euphoria® Character Behavior system for lifelike movement and a dark and twisted story, Max Payne 3 is a seamless, highly detailed, cinematic experience.

Bumpy wrote on Jun 6, 2012, 07:33:I don't own nor have I played the game but judging on graphics/setting alone, it certainly does not give me the impression of a MP game. Looks simply like another generic 3rd person cover shooter with a overbuilt hardass protagonist copying parts of Kane&Lynch and Stranglehold.

Kane&Lynch meets Stranglehold sounds impressively accurate, actually.

Also, what I found out at the last hour or 2 of the game is that it still wants you to run through the middle of the room and shoot guys in slow-motion. Been playing it safe by covering too much throughout the game. It was only after my screw-it-this-isn't-how-the-game-should-be-played rage that I realized the old way worked fine.

I'm not sure if the bullet-time got slower with each kill made during it? Does anyone? Max Payne 2 (and 1?) had this which was great fun.

I don't own nor have I played the game but judging on graphics/setting alone, it certainly does not give me the impression of a MP game. Looks simply like another generic 3rd person cover shooter with a overbuilt hardass protagonist copying parts of Kane&Lynch and Stranglehold.

There were only a few games in my gaming history that managed to spontaniously made me shed a little tear. The end of Max Payne 2 was one of them. It was beautiful how he got over her death mostly because of Mona, if I remember that correctly at all.

Max Payne was over it. He didn't need to turn into a self-loathing alcoholic that sympathizes with thugs that put bullets in womens' heads.

How did I want the story to turn out? I haven't thought about it too much but needless to say there are literally countless of scenarios that could've still been taken place in the dark, cold alleys of Noir York.

Yes, I think it's a matter of opinion. From the first moment i heard about the Sao Paulo idea it didn't feel right to me. They promised they'd stay true to Max but I didn't believe it and rightly so because I can't see why they did. Max could've been any guy in this game.

I stand by my point that there's nothing left of Max Payne. I was a huge fan of the first two games. I had to be force myself into remembering I was playing a Max Payne game all the time. It didn't come naturally. If it did to you, well.. obviously I don't understand it.

I don't think they could've done the same ol' "my wife is dead! " story again. They certainly called back to it often enough but the point of this story was that he was washed up. The very thing you hate was the point and there's nothing that can really be done about that. I enjoyed the story a lot and felt it was very "Max Payne", we just have different ideas of what that means.

I'm not trying to bait you or anything here but I'm genuinely interested in what you think the story should've been. I guess they could've done a reboot or some kind of inter-story but what could be done at this point in Max's life that you would find acceptable?

spoilers about the end: Powerless? The reason they went and "recruited" Max was because they knew he could fuck a ton of shit up, he's a one man army and simultaneously a bozo who can't figure shit out because he's always so fucked up... At the end he sobers up, shaves his head, and decides to burn-that-mutha-down.

Sepharo wrote on Jun 5, 2012, 12:01:They're skippable... You just need to wait for the next area/level to load.

Yeah not really seeing that here, I've got it on a Crucial M4 512GB SSD and any time you attempt to skip a cutscene it just says "still loading" even if its about 2 seconds before the cutscene is supposed to end. I haven't tried it on every single cutscene yet but the handful or so I got annoyed at last night the usual keys to skip had no effect. Is my game install fubar or something? Am I missing a game option or another key combo to skip it? Several reviews mention this problem too so now I'm really confused.

edit: screw it, I'll nuke it and reinstall to see if that helps.

Shite you just wasted allot of time reinstalling, probably.

It has nothing to do with your install. Have you ever had a wrong install that caused these types of things? Come on, Verno. You know better than that.

Rockstar was so horribly afraid of loading screnes that sometimes you indeed can't skip them because later in the already loaded map of a cutscene, the scene has to transition into a new map which needs said cutscene to disguise its loading screen. Its on those occasions that you cannot skip cutscenes because later in the cutscene, it needs to start loading a new area you want to skip to. It's horrible.

Today I decided to restart a chapter because the game jerked me into a cutscene, locking a door behind me, while I wasn't done exploring the set yet. Yes, Max often warns you of such incoming vacuums by starting to walk, but not always. Annoying!! It took me 5+ goddamn minutes to desperately try to skip through a goddamn boring scene where Max had a boring dialogue with a boring semi-deus-ex-machina kinda guy. *heavy sigh*

Also, at last, Sepharo.. No. Just.. no. Yes this story still can be labeled "noir" but that doesn't make it Max Payne by definition. I finished the game today and my final verdict is that Rockstar raped Max Payne to shreds. Southpark should make an episode about it. You see, there was a time I thought Max was driven by loss and vengeance. Max Payne 3 made me realize more and more as the story progressed, that the only thing that drives Max Payne is the fact that he's a dumb fuck who just loves to jump into trouble and shoot his way out of it. His wife and kid have absolutely nothing to do with it, I realized. Sadly.

The moment when he said something within him hoped that that certain guy (who can murder women by shooting them point-blank in the face) had survived a certain explosion, was the straw that broke the cammels back. Max, of all people, would LOATHE someone like that.

There's nothing left of Max's arse after what Rockstar did to him. But hey... it's "noir".

Sepharo wrote on Jun 4, 2012, 01:51:I played MP2 a bit a few days before MP3 came out... I'm not seeing the huge differences in movement you guys are talking about. Feels pretty much the same to me with better animation.

Going to have to disagree majorly with "nothing left of the old Max Payne" feels every bit of Max Payne to me. Man against the corrupt and dirty world, double crossed, confused, fuck-it-all and narrated with cheesy metaphors.

Max is too f*cking emo in part 3. Yeah, he was pretty emo before, but he took on military special forces and oceans of mobsters and secret conspiracies and russian mafia and shit... by himself.

Now some fuckin' 3rd world thugs get the drop on him while he's drunk and he's like "I'm all powerless".

And I don't care what anyone says, that video splitting/blurring shit is going to be the Star Trek Lens Flare of 2012 for videogames.

Sepharo wrote on Jun 5, 2012, 12:01:They're skippable... You just need to wait for the next area/level to load.

Yeah not really seeing that here, I've got it on a Crucial M4 512GB SSD and any time you attempt to skip a cutscene it just says "still loading" even if its about 2 seconds before the cutscene is supposed to end. I haven't tried it on every single cutscene yet but the handful or so I got annoyed at last night the usual keys to skip had no effect. Is my game install fubar or something? Am I missing a game option or another key combo to skip it? Several reviews mention this problem too so now I'm really confused.

The cutscenes not being skippable is driving me insane. If you want to redo a chapter or get killed you sometimes have to sit through minutes of them just to get to a gameplay segment. No idea how that didn't come up in focus testing, please patch that shit in.

I just didn't feel like writing a ton (hell, more than a few sentences).

I also probably incorrectly assumed you were more familiar with my previous posts on the topic of noir. As far as controls go, I stand by what I said, I played some MP2 days before MP3, a shoot dodge is a shoot dodge. In a story driven game like MP3 I'd rather have more realistic animations than millisecond turn-on-a-dime responsiveness but even having said that I didn't really notice the delays. Dodging bullets? That just seemed like a happy accident throughout the series... remember bullet time doesn't speed up Max's movements just his/your reaction speed.

Sepharo wrote on Jun 4, 2012, 01:51:I played MP2 a bit a few days before MP3 came out... I'm not seeing the huge differences in movement you guys are talking about. Feels pretty much the same to me with better animation.

Going to have to disagree majorly with "nothing left of the old Max Payne" feels every bit of Max Payne to me. Man against the corrupt and dirty world, double crossed, confused, fuck-it-all and narrated with cheesy metaphors.

You managed to describe a one-in-a-dozen concept with that last sentence, Sepharo. If that's your point why you disagree with my complaint, then I can only shrug and in futility beg you to think on it again. There's more to Max Payne than just the character, Max Payne. It was the melacholy, the twilight nightmare he lived in. It was "THE FLESH OF FALLEN ANGELS!" and "mirrorS arE morE fuN thaN televisioN" weirdness. It was the constant reminder of his loss through visions, flashbacks and proper characters like Mona Sax -- not this "I failed to save a gold-digging slut" GTA'ish bullcrap.

You're simply wrong about the controls, Sepharo. Rockstar took realistic animations > gameplay, Remedy took gameplay > realistic animations. If I want to strafe left, I don't want to feel a slight delay.. maybe even move forward/backward a bit because realistic animation demands it. I just want to strafe left, dodge a freaking bullet in the process. If you say the controls feel the same, then you're simply wrong, indeed.

Sepharo wrote on Jun 4, 2012, 01:51:I played MP2 a bit a few days before MP3 came out... I'm not seeing the huge differences in movement you guys are talking about. Feels pretty much the same to me with better animation.

Going to have to disagree majorly with "nothing left of the old Max Payne" feels every bit of Max Payne to me. Man against the corrupt and dirty world, double crossed, confused, fuck-it-all and narrated with cheesy metaphors.

Agree with you Seph, I finished it last night, and loved every moment. It certainly felt like a Max Payne game to me. Double crosses, fun gun play, cheesy one liners, and graphically it's gorgeous.

My only complaint is the movement in multiplayer is extremely stiff, but then again that's a Rockstar trademark anyway. You'd think with all the money they've made they could hire a few animators that are actually good.

I played MP2 a bit a few days before MP3 came out... I'm not seeing the huge differences in movement you guys are talking about. Feels pretty much the same to me with better animation.

Going to have to disagree majorly with "nothing left of the old Max Payne" feels every bit of Max Payne to me. Man against the corrupt and dirty world, double crossed, confused, fuck-it-all and narrated with cheesy metaphors.

Aero wrote on Jun 3, 2012, 15:51:In the end, I think the biggest problem is that Max's controls aren't that good. Compared to other cover-and-roll third person shooters like Gears of War and such, it's kind of awkward. There's a lot of GTA-ness in there, where completing the animation is more important than fluid control, and the animations don't transition very well. Max has to stop and recover to a neutral position after every move so the next one can begin, which often leaves you standing up straight like an idiot in the middle of a hallway when your intention was to roll out of cover on one side and enter cover on the other.

I think there's a little too much emphasis on graphics there. If making the controls fluid means fudging the animations sometimes, so be it. Difficulty through awkward controls is pretty much the fundamental video game design sin.

That said, it's not all that bad, but given the polish and effort expended everywhere else, you figure they could have done a better job with the controls.

The other issue is that Max Payne games have always been about movement. There was no set cover system, so movement was your best defense. Enemy bullets (hell your bullets too) in bullet time have been significantly sped up, and bullet time basically lets you aim in a second or two before you get shot to death as opposed to being primarily a survival mechanic.

But yeah, the "must finish animation before starting the next one" kind of blows. I need to go back and seriously remap my keyboard layout. Adding a dedicated "aim" button really changed the layout of the keys oddly enough and has made movement... kind of funky since I now have the G key to roll way over on the right and some other things like no jump button.

The two of you nailed it. These things are exactly Max Payne 3's problems.

Still, I also want to add the entire atmosphere. People can tell me this is still a "noir" story, but then I frankly don't know what "noir" means exactly and I'm not that interested on finding out. What I mean to say is that there's nothing left of the old Max Payne in this game, except for his voice and some flashbacks that make me curse the game every time it goes back to the present.

Why Rockstar is so obsessed with the sunset boulevard ghettos and thug-life is beyond me, and although the game is still good.. they ruined Max Payne. They should've kept that shit where it belonged: GTA.

Aero wrote on Jun 3, 2012, 15:51:In the end, I think the biggest problem is that Max's controls aren't that good. Compared to other cover-and-roll third person shooters like Gears of War and such, it's kind of awkward. There's a lot of GTA-ness in there, where completing the animation is more important than fluid control, and the animations don't transition very well. Max has to stop and recover to a neutral position after every move so the next one can begin, which often leaves you standing up straight like an idiot in the middle of a hallway when your intention was to roll out of cover on one side and enter cover on the other.

I think there's a little too much emphasis on graphics there. If making the controls fluid means fudging the animations sometimes, so be it. Difficulty through awkward controls is pretty much the fundamental video game design sin.

That said, it's not all that bad, but given the polish and effort expended everywhere else, you figure they could have done a better job with the controls.

The other issue is that Max Payne games have always been about movement. There was no set cover system, so movement was your best defense. Enemy bullets (hell your bullets too) in bullet time have been significantly sped up, and bullet time basically lets you aim in a second or two before you get shot to death as opposed to being primarily a survival mechanic.

But yeah, the "must finish animation before starting the next one" kind of blows. I need to go back and seriously remap my keyboard layout. Adding a dedicated "aim" button really changed the layout of the keys oddly enough and has made movement... kind of funky since I now have the G key to roll way over on the right and some other things like no jump button.

In the end, I think the biggest problem is that Max's controls aren't that good. Compared to other cover-and-roll third person shooters like Gears of War and such, it's kind of awkward. There's a lot of GTA-ness in there, where completing the animation is more important than fluid control, and the animations don't transition very well. Max has to stop and recover to a neutral position after every move so the next one can begin, which often leaves you standing up straight like an idiot in the middle of a hallway when your intention was to roll out of cover on one side and enter cover on the other.

I think there's a little too much emphasis on graphics there. If making the controls fluid means fudging the animations sometimes, so be it. Difficulty through awkward controls is pretty much the fundamental video game design sin.

That said, it's not all that bad, but given the polish and effort expended everywhere else, you figure they could have done a better job with the controls.